Wednesday, 25 September 2013

Sexual violence services in New Zealand are chronically underfunded. Wellington Rape Crisis is currently funded by Hell Pizza, who only gave them shut-up money after they rewarded a Facebook user with pizza for sexual assault.

But really all you need to do is click here and make an online submission.One in four New Zealand women and one in ten men will suffer sexual violence in their lifetimes. This issue matters, and it matters to you and your loved ones. Use your words and tell the government why we need to fix this.

The humourless feminist is a pretty persistent myth. She's a dumb bitch who can't take a joke, always makinga fuss when really we have equality now amirite ladies. It's a myth made up to silence women. Can't you take a joke? And it's just that - a myth. I don't know what feminists you're hanging out with, but the feminists I know are some of the funniest people I've ever met.

The humourless feminist myth is a part of the culture we live in. The thing about culture is we don't just absorb it - we shape it, either through actions or silence.

But the game doesn't have to be played like that. It's released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. "That means you can use and remix the game for free, but you can’t sell it."

I made a sanitised deck, removing all the rape jokes and Americanisms, and about half the boners. (You can download the PDF here.) To replace the cards I removed, I made my own deck, which has a lot of stuff specific to the female experience, like "period clots" and "skorts" to balance the bro-ness inherent in CAH. (You can download that PDF here. Remixes of CAH like this one are also under Creative Commons licensing, so you can correct that typo if you want, but I'm not going to bother.)

Feminist Cards Against Humanity kicks that up a notch. The jokes are about feminism, and being feminist, the struggle and how far we have to go still and damn if you don't laugh you'll cry.

"Non-feminists" (by which I mean "people who didn't take any Women's Studies papers" not "raging bigots") will probably won't find this deck funny. That's because it relies on jargon. Every group has jargon. My pals have a joke which about the difference between Python and JavaScript or Pearl and Ruby - or anyway, there's these two programming languages and they're different and just because I don't understand why that's funny it doesn't mean it isn't. It just means I didn't take any CompSci papers. The onus is on me to repair this gaping hole in my knowledge, rather than demand that jokes only be told on my level. It's the same with this deck - if you don't think it's funny, it's probably not the joke's fault and when you're Card Czar you can always make the winning card about boners, every time.

There's not enough feminist Cards Against Humanity cards to make up a full deck, so mix them in with the deck you already have - and when you're playing with people who don't speak feminist, either take each card as a teachable moment, or institute a house rule which allows for the setting aside of confusing cards. I play by the latter as I can barely explain "intersectionalty" sober, and CAH is a party game which is enhanced by a certain level of intoxication.

Speaking of sobrioty - if you're going to hashtag, may I suggest #FemCAH rather than #FeministCAH to reduce typos. If you're feeling mischievous, you might also tag #CAH so it shows up in searches for the original game.

Finally, if you've played and enjoyed the game, please leave me a nice comment saying so. If you have a wicked idea for a card, leave that in the comments too.